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THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES 



IN THEIR 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 



FRANKLIN JOHNSON, D.D. 










FUNK & WAGNALLS, 



NEW YORK : 1887. LONDON : 

18 and 20 Astor Place. 44 Fleet Street. 

[All rights reserved.] 






■z* 



^\° 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1887, 

By FUNK & WAGNALLS, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C. 



CONTENTS 



I. PAGE 

Introductory 5 

II. 
Materialism 11 

III. 

Superstition and Imposture 12 

IV. 
Clairvoyance ; Prophecy 14 

V. 

Monitions ; Apparitions of the Living ; Prophetic 
Visions 35 

VI. 
Prayer 42 

VII. 

The Atmosphere op Assemblies 48 



IV CONTENTS. 

VIII. 

PAGE 

Physical Manifestations in Revivals 50 

IX. 
Mind-Cure ; Prayer-Cure ; Faith-Cure 52 

X. 
Revelation and Inspiration 54 

XI. 
Mesmerism ; Demoniac Possession 56 

XII. 
Modern Demons 61 

XIII. 
Haunted Houses ; Demons 65 

XIV. 
Haunted Houses ; The History of Balaam 86 

XV. 
Retrospect and Prospect 89 



THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES 

IN THEIR RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT, 



INTRODUCTORY. 



It is now nearly forty years since Hugh Miller 
sent forth to the Christian world the following 
words : 

" The clergy, as a class, suffer themselves to 
linger far in the rear of an intelligent and accom- 
plished laity, a full age behind the requirements of 
the time. Let them not shut their eyes to the 
danger which is obviously coming. The battle of 
the Evidences will have as certainly to be fought on 
the field of physical science as it was contested in 
the last age on that of the metaphysics. And on 
this new arena the combatants will have to employ 
new weapons, which it will be the privilege of the 
challenger to choose. The old, opposed to these, 



b THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES' II* THEIK 

would prove but of little avail. In an age of mus- 
kets and artillery the bows and arrows of an obso- 
lete school of warfare would be found greatly less 
than sufficient, in the field of battle, for purposes 
either of assault or defence." 

The prophecy w T as true ; the defenders of our re- 
ligion were celebrating their victory over the scep- 
tical students of mind ; but their joy was prema- 
ture ; they had yet to meet the sceptical students of 
matter. This second battle has been fought and 
won, and its dying echoes still sound in our ears. 
The seer who foretold it sought to arouse the lead- 
ers of the Christian hosts and prepare them for the 
coming conflict ; yet it may be said that they were 
taken by surprise, and that, had they heeded his 
warning in time, surveyed the field carefully, and 
made a wise disposition of their forces, they might 
have avoided many mistakes and much labor and 



This glance at the past may teach us a lesson 
for the future. It is probable that the enemy 
is about to change his method of attack, and that, 
if we wish not to be taken again at a disadvantage, 
we must study his recent movements, ascertain what 
they portend, stand ready to turn to the new quarter 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 7 

from which he threatens to advance, meet him with 
arms equal to his own, and maintain our ground not 
only with courage, but also with vigilance and in- 
telligence. In the past fifteen years the materialistic 
interpretation of nature has made no progress ; on 
the contrary, it has encountered numerous unex- 
pected difficulties, and materialists have assumed a 
less boastful tone. Materialism is no longer a nov- 
elty to the world at large, and cultivated people in 
general have ceased to think much of it, though it 
is still a vast force within the limited circles of those 
who make a specialty of the physical sciences. It 
is no longer capable of serving the purpose of the 
great enemy of God and man, and we may expect, 
therefore, that, while he will not cast it aside, he 
will assign to it a subordinate use, and invent some 
other weapon of offence. 

Possibly this may be found in the psychic studies 
now engaging the attention of many distinguished 
men. These studies are termed psychic in a modi- 
tied sense : they pertain not to the ordinary opera- 
tions of the mind, but to the unusual, such as 
thought-transference, somnambulism, mesmerism, 
clairvoyance, spiritualism, apparitions of the living, 
haunted houses, ghosts, and the Buddhistic occult- 



8 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

ism. Many of the phenomena to be investigated 
seem to lie in the dim borderland between the spirit 
and the body, or, if there be no such neutral zone, 
in the territory where they overlap and mingle, a 
region hitherto occupied only by the savage hordes 
of superstition, imposture, and quackery. 

The studies have been carried on chiefly under 
the direction of the British Society for Psychical 
Research. This society was constituted in 1882, 
under the presidency of Professor Henry Sidgwick, 
of Trinity College, Cambridge. lie has recently 
retired from the chair, and Professor Balfour 
Stewart has been chosen his successor. At the end 
of 1882 the society had 150 members ; at the end 
of 1883, 288 ; at the end of 1884, 520 ; and in 
April, 1885, 586. It is thus apparent that both in- 
terest and confidence in its work are increasing. 
The President, Professor Balfour Stewart, says in 
his inaugural address, published a year ago : " Men 
of the highest standing in all departments of knowl- 
edge have consented to join our ranks." Among 
the many distinguished members who are actively 
engaged in the labors of the society the following 
may be mentioned : the Bishop of Carlisle ; the 
Bishop of Ripon ; the Dean of Lincoln ; Lord 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 9 

Rayleigh, who has just retired from the chair of 
Elementary Physics in Cambridge University ; 
Henry Sidgwick, Professor of Moral Philosophy in 
Cambridge University, and author of works on 
political economy and the methods of ethics ; Mrs. 
Sidgwick, wife of Professor Sidgwick, and sister of 
the late Francis M. Balfour, the celebrated embry- 
ologist, a lady of remarkable intelligence ; Balfour 
Stewart, Professor of Physics in Owens College, 
Manchester ; TV. F. Barrett, Professor of Physics 
in the Royal College of Science, Dublin ; Edmund 
Gurney, whose book on " The Power of Sound" 
has given him a high rank among physicists ; 
Hensley Wedgwood, the author of the " Etymo- 
logical Dictionary ;" Arthur Balfour, M.P., the 
author of " A Defence of Philosophic Doubt;" 
St. George Lane Fox, an authority in mythology ; 
Richard A. Hutton, the editor of the Spectator ; 
Malcomb Gurney Guthrie, the critic of the philos- 
ophy of Herbert Spencer ; TV. F. Myers, the 
writer of essays and poems ; Dr. George TVyld, 
President of the British Theosophical Society, and 
Earl Russell, the grandson of the statesman. The 
list of active members shows many other noted 
names. The honorary members, who, though not 



10 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

actively engaged in the work of the society, consent 
to support it with their influence, are J. C. Adams, 
LL.D., F.R.S., Professor of Astronomy in Cam- 
bridge University, and the discoverer, with Lever- 
rier, of the planet Neptune ; William Crookes, 
F.R.S., the physicist ; Alfred Eussel Wallace, the 
naturalist ; the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, the 
statesman ; Lord Tennyson, the poet ; John Rus- 
kin, the art-critic, and G. F. Watts, R.A., the 
painter. 

These names are given here to show the reader 
that the researches of the Psychical Society are pur- 
sued in earnest, and by men of sober judgment, 
above the suspicion of credulity or haste. 

A similar society has been formed in this country ; 
it is composed of promising materials ; but it is too 
young as yet to report any very important results of 
its labors. 

These things render it probable that the new 
psychic studies have come to stay for at least a gen- 
eration, and that they will challenge the attention 
of the most highly cultivated minds. If such shall 
be the case, sceptics will not fail to use them for 
the promotion of unbelief. It is evident that 
Christian thinkers should not ignore them, but, on 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 11 

the contrary, should engage in them heartily, and 
in a judicial temper, eager only for the truth, and 
confident that when found it will aid rather than 
hinder the advancement of their holy religion. 

The British society has collected a great mass of 
facts ; it has already deduced from these a number 
of important theories and a few still more important 
conclusions ; and it is not too early to consider what 
advantages the Church may fairly gain from its 
labors, what use the sceptic will seek to make of 
them, and how best to answer the arguments which 
he will find in them. 



II. 
MATERIALISM. 

We may account it a gain that the attention of 
men of science is no longer directed exclusively to 
matter, but is turned to the mind. We see what 
we look at, and suffer it to shut other things from 
our perception. To one who makes the sun-spots 
his special study the light of the sun is important 
chiefly as a means of exhibiting the darkness by 
contrast. To one who makes the ant his special 



12 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IK THEIR 

study this tiny creature appears a formidable rival 
of man. So to one who makes matter his special 
study the very mind with which he studies be- 
comes an object of secondary importance, and he 
may seek to interpret it as a mere phase of matter. 
Those who believe in God and in the immortality 
of the soul should be pleased with the evidence that 
men of science are less exclusively devoted to the 
study of matter, and are allowing the mind a share 
of their researches, even though in its more unusual 
manifestations ; for they should find in this fact 
another evidence of the decay of materialism, and 
a prophecy of its speedy disappearance from the 
cultivated circles of society, assured that mind will 
vindicate itself when it can secure fair and impar- 
tial attention. 



III. 

SUPERSTITION AND IMPOSTURE. 

The Christian may hope also that the scientific 
study of such subjects as mesmerism, spiritualism, 
and clairvoyance will dissipate much superstition 
and prevent much imposture. Quacks and charla- 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 13 

tans of every sort take advantage of mystery to 
impose upon their dupes : in the infancy of astron- 
omy the astrologer nourishes with his pretence of 
reading the future ; and in the infancy of chemistry 
the alchemist nourishes with his pretence of the 
philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. So to- 
day, in the infancy of our psychic studies, we have 
a host of mediums, clairvoyants, mesmerizers, and 
fortune-tellers, who claim to wield extraordinary, if 
not supernatural powers, who batten upon ignorance 
and credulity, and who wield an influence but little 
favorable to the religious and moral improvement 
of those who consult them and follow their counsels. 
They live in a region of twilight, concerning which 
the most intelligent know little more than the most 
unlettered. Should the new psychic studies prove 
that there is no clairvoyance, no mesmerism, no 
basis of fact for spiritualism to rest upon except 
tricks of legerdemain, millions of souls, now in ab- 
ject bondage to superstition and irreligion, would 
be released. But perhaps we are not to look for this 
disproof ; the work already accomplished renders 
it almost or quite certain that it will not be given us. 

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. 



14 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

But we are promised a solution of many riddles, the 
reduction of a thousand marvels to the ordinary 
plane of natural law, and this will be a good service, 
which will deliver multitudes from delusion and 
sin. The advantage will not be less than that 
which was gained when astrology became astronomy 
and alchemy chemistry. Indeed, it may be greater ; 
for the superstitions of our time are more directly 
hostile to Christianity than were those of astrology 
and alchemy, which were cultivated in the bosom 
of the Church, and not seldom by the pure and the 
devout. 



IV. 

CLAIRVOYANCE ; PROPHECY. 

The subject which the British Society has investi- 
gated most thoroughly is the alleged transference of 
thought from one mind to another without the 
agency of external signs. The most common terms 
to designate the process are mind-reading, thought- 
transference, and telepathy. The experiments have 
been numerous, and have been conducted with 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 15 

many precautions to avoid error. They lead to two 
conclusions : first, that the great majority of man- 
kind have no power to interpret clearly the minds 
of others except by the ordinary agencies of com- 
munication ; and second, that a small percentage of 
the human race, under favorable circumstances and 
to a limited extent, can read the minds of others 
without the ordinary agencies. Some of these few 
possess the gift in a low and others in a higher de- 
gree. The method of investigation usually era- 
ployed is the following : the experimenter fixes his 
mind intently upon some object or geometrical 
figure, and the subject of the experiments, who is 
called the percipient, guesses what it is, or attempts 
to make a drawing of it. From a long series of 
experiments, tested by the calculus of probabilities, 
it is easy to determine whether the subject is a 
mind-reader or not. A brief extract from the third 
report of the committee on thought-transference 
will illustrate the method pursued and the care 
with which the investigation is conducted : 

" The percipient, Mr. Smith, is seated blindfolded 
at a table in our own room ; a paper and pencil are 
within his reach ; and a member of the committee 
is at his side. Another member of the committee 



16 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

leaves the room, and outside the closed door draws 
some figure at random. Mr. Blackburn, who, so 
far, has remained in the room with Mr. Smith, is 
now called out, and the door closed ; the drawing 
is then held before him for a few seconds, till its 
impression is stamped upon his mind. Then, clos- 
ing his eves, Mr. Blackburn is led back into the 
room, and placed, standing or sitting, behind Mr. 
Smith, at a distance of some two feet from him. A 
brief period of intense mental concentration on Mr. 
Blackburn's part now follows. Presently Mr. Smith 
takes up the pencil, amid the unbroken and absolute 
silence of all present, and attempts to reproduce on 
paper the impression he has gained. He is allowed 
to do as he pleases as regards the bandage round his 
eyes ; sometimes he pulls it down before he begins to 
draw ; but if the figures be not distinctly present to 
his mind, he prefers to let it remain on, and draws 
fragments of the figures as they are seen. During 
all this time Mr. Blackburn's eyes are, generally, 
firmly closed ; sometimes he requests us to bandage 
his eyes tightly as an aid to concentration ; and ex- 
cept when it is distinctly recorded, he has not touched 
Mr. Smith, and has not gone in front of him, or in 
any way within his possible field of vision, since he 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 



17 



re-entered the room. "When Mr. Smith has drawn 
what he can, the original drawing, which has so 
far remained outside the room, is brought in, 
and compared with the reproduction. Both are 
marked by the committee and put away in a secure 
place." 

To illustrate the surprising degree of accuracy 
attained by some of the best percipients, several 
tables like the following are published in the report : 



Things 
Chosen. 




N 
Rigt 

00 

o 


o. 

it on 

DD 

si 


o.Sf 


If First Guess 
only is Counted, 
the Result by Ex- 
periment was 


The Chance of Suc- 
cess by Accident was 


Cards 

Nos. 10-100.. 

Objects 

Names 


36 
20 
21 

8 


10 
5 

7 
4 


9 
3 
1 
3 


24 

9 
10 

7 


1 right guess in 3% 
1 " " 4 
1 " " 3 
1 " " 2 


1 right guess in 52. 
1 " " 90. 
1 " " 40 
Something indefinitely 
small. 


Totals 


85 


26 


16 


50 





The following specimens of figures thought of by 
experimenters, and of their reproductions by per- 
cipients, will serve still further to illustrate the sub. 
ject, and to show on what cogent evidence the so- 
ciety bases its conclusion that beyond question 
some persons possess the power of mind-read- 
ing : 



18 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 



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RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 21 

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RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 23 

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RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT, 25 

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26 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

There is some evidence that many persons who 
cannot be called mind-readers, and perhaps the 
majority of our race, may be affected in a vague 
manner by the thoughts and feelings of others, 
specially if these are distinct or vehement. The 
proof is presented in a report of experiments con- 
ducted by the well-known French investigator, 
M. Ch. Eichet, published in the .Revue Philoso- 
phique for December, 1884, and discussed by Mr. 
Edmund Gurney in the " Proceedings of the Soci- 
ety for Psychical Research" of the same month and 
year. The experiments were numerous and varied, 
and but a single brief extract from the account of 
Mr. Gurney can be given here ; but this is sufficient 
to illustrate the method pursued and the results 
obtained : 

" A card being drawn at random out of a pack, 
the ' agent ' fixed his attention on it, and the 
' percipient ' endeavored to name it. The novelty 
of M. Ri chefs method was this : that though the 
success, as judged by the results of any particular 
series of trials, seemed slight, showing that he was 
not experimenting with what we should consider 
good subjects, he made the trials on a sufficiently 
extended scale to bring out the fact that the guesses 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 2? 

were on the whole, though not strikingly, above 
the number that pure accident would account for, 
and that their total was considerably above that 
number. 

" This observation involves a new and striking 
application of the calculus of probabilities. M. 
Richet takes advantage of the fact that, the larger 
the number of trials made under conditions where 
success is purely accidental, the more nearly will 
the total number of successes attained conform to 
the figure which the formula of probabilities gives. 
For instance, if some one draws a card at random 
out of a full pack, and before it has been looked at 
by any one present, I make a guess at its suit, my 
chance of being right is of course 1 in 4. Similar- 
ly, if the process is repeated 52 times, the probable 
number of successes, according to the strict calculus 
of probabilities, is 13 ; in 520 trials the probable 
number of successes is 130. Now, if we consider 
only a short series of 52 guesses, I may be acci- 
dentally right many more times than 13, or many 
less times. But if the series be prolonged — if 520 
guesses be allowed, instead of 52 — the actual num- 
ber of successes will vary from the probable num- 
ber within much smaller limits ; and if we suppose 



28 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

an infinite prolongation, the proportional diver- 
gence between the actual and the probable number 
will become infinitely small. This being so, it is 
clear that if, in a very short series of trials, we find 
a considerable difference between the actual num- 
ber of successes and the probable number, there is 
no reason for regarding this difference as anything 
but purely accidental ; but if we find a similar 
difference in a very long series, we are justified in 
surmising that some condition beyond mere acci- 
dent has been at work. If cards be drawn in suc- 
cession from a pack, and I guess the suit rightly in 
3 out of 4 trials, I shall be foolish to be surprised ; 
but if I guess the suit rightly in 3000 out of 4000 
trials, I shall be equally foolish not to be surprised. 
" Now, M. Eichet continued his trials until he 
had obtained a very large total ; and the results were 
such at any rate as to suggest that accident had not 
ruled undisturbed, that a guiding condition had 
been introduced which affected in the right direc- 
tion a certain small percentage of the guesses made. 
That condition, if it existed, could be nothing else 
than the fact that, prior to the guess being made, 
a person in the neighborhood of the guesser had 
concentrated his attention on the card drawn. 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 29 

Hence the results, so far as they go, make for the 
reality of the faculty of ' mental suggestion.' The 
faculty, if present, was clearly very slightly devel- 
oped, whence the necessity of experimenting on a 
very large scale before its genuine influence on the 
numbers could be even surmised. 

" Out of 2927 trials at guessing the suit of a 
card, drawn at random, and steadily looked at by 
another person, the actual number of successes was 
789 ; the probable number, had pure accident pre- 
vailed, was 732. The total was made up of 39 
series of different lengths, in which 11 persons took 
part, M. Richet himself being in some cases the 
guesser, and in others the person who looked at the 
card. He observed that, when a large number of 
trials were made at one sitting, the aptitude of both 
persons concerned seemed to be affected ; it became 
harder for the agent to visualize, and the proportion 
of successes on the guesser' s part decreased. If we 
agree to reject from the above total all the series 
in which over 100 trials were made consecutively, 
the numbers become more striking. Out of 1833 
trials, we then get 510 successes, the probable num- 
ber being only 458 ; that is to say, the actual num- 
ber exceeds the probable number by about -jV- 



30 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

Some further experiments, where the particular 
card, and not merely the suit, was to be guessed, 
gave a number of successes slightly, but only slight- 
ly, above the probable number. Out of 782 trials, 
the actual number of successes was 17, while the 
probable number was 15 ; and there was a similarly 
slight excess over the probable number when only 
the color of the card was to be guessed ; whence 
M. Richet surmises that there may be a field of 
choice too wide, and a field of choice too narrow, 
for the influence of ' mental suggestion ' to have 
effective play." 

The results obtained by M. Richet become more 
significant for us when we consider that the eleven 
percipients engaged in the experiments were just 
such persons as the investigator had about him, 
none of whom possessed any special telepathic 
powers. 

Mind-reading is at least a branch, and may be 
all, of what is known as clairvoyance. The society 
has not experimented as yet sufficiently to determine 
whether the same power may be employed in the 
reading of matter, as well as mind ; that is, in view- 
ing distant events and scenes, and in the diagnosis 
of disease ; but still, we may say that the stories 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 31 

heard in almost all social circles of the success of 
clairvoyants in these directions are rendered more 
probable by the establishment of the fact that some 
persons possess the power to read the minds of 
others. It may be that clairvoyance, freed from 
imposture and from the pretence of spiritual com- 
munications, and kept within due bounds of so- 
briety, will prove a useful assistant to the physician 
and the explorer. In any case, the experiments 
should be carried much further, so that, if clairvoy- 
ance is limited strictly to the realm of thought, the 
world may know it, and may cease to believe in its 
wider powers and its spiritualistic accessories, and so 
that, if it is capable of a greater extension, its 
exact laws and limitations may be discovered and 
published, and its employment taken from the 
hands of infidels, free-lovers, quacks and impos- 
tors, and given to the Christian and the man of 
science. 

The spiritualist has long maintained that the 
prophets of Israel were nothing more than clairvoy- 
ants. Should it be proved that clairvoyancy exists, 
in the broader sense of the word, we shall hear many 
persons of a much higher grade express the same 
opinion. It is worth while, therefore, to consider 



32 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

what answer the Christian should give. On the 
one hand, he should point out the fact that the He- 
brew prophet was no mere reader of the thoughts 
of other men and of distant or concealed objects 
and actions, lie was sometimes this, as the modern 
clairvoyant professes to be ; but he was distin- 
guished from the clairvoyant, first, by his accurate 
and large vision of the future, including the rise 
and fall of cities and empires, the coming of the 
Messiah, and the general progress of the human 
race ; and second, by his lofty moral and religious 
tone, which made him a reformer, a preacher of 
righteousness. But, on the other hand, the Chris- 
tian should cheerfully admit that the prophet may 
have possessed, as the basis of his gifts, the clairvoy- 
ant faculty ; that the true prophet may have been 
called of God partly because he possessed this fac- 
ulty ; that the schools in which the young prophets 
seem to have been trained, as well as other provi- 
dences attending their development, may have been 
agencies for the education, the enlargement, and 
the regulation of this faculty ; and that God may 
have made use of it in commissioning His mes- 
sengers to His people and in communicating His 
mind to the world, as our Lord took the few loaves 



relation to christian thought. 33 

and fishes and blessed them when He would feed 
the thousands by miracle, thus uniting the natural 
and the supernatural in one work, since both pro- 
ceed from His hands and are brethren of the same 
household. Indeed, it cannot be denied that the 
early forms of prophecy in Israel, after Moses, look 
somewhat like a purified and ennobled clairvoyance. 
When Saul went hunting for his father's asses, and 
failed to find them, his servant advised him to con- 
sult Samuel, the man of God. Then the two spoke 
together as to what sort of present, out of their 
scanty store, they should take to him as his re- 
ward, and finally hit upon " the fourth part of a 
shekel of silver" as a sufficient payment. The in- 
spired author of this record adds to it the following 
most curious antiquarian note : " Beforetime in 
Israel, when a man went to enquire of God, thus 
he said : Come and let us go to the Seer : for he 
that is now called a Prophet was beforetime called 
a Seer." The name of " seer," in significance so 
similar to our word clairvoyant, appears from the 
whole passage to have been given to him who bore 
it on account of his ability to see things not visible 
to ordinary persons, and he afterward acquired the 
higher titles of "prophet" and >; man of God" 



34 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

because it was perceived that lie was something 
more than a seer. The ordinary perplexities of 
life, like a journey in search of lost cattle, were 
submitted to him, and he was paid for his advice. 
Even as late as the time of Elisha the custom of 
paying the prophet for his services was maintained ; 
for when Benhadad was sick he said to Hazael, 
" Take a present in thine hand, and go meet the 
man of God, and enquire of Jehovah by him, say- 
ing, Shall I recover of this sickness V ' Some proph- 
ets seem to have received fuller and more precise 
revelations than others, Elijah and Elisha having 
been distinguished in this respect from " the sons 
of the prophets,'' or learners in the prophetic 
schools, mentioned in connection with them ; and 
may it not be that the difference was one of nature 
as well as of grace, and that these, having had a larger 
capacity as seers than the others, could be employed 
by God for the communication of His will, as the 
others could not, unless they had been first created 
over again, and changed in the very structure of 
their being ? Moreover, the faintings, the fallings, 
the trances of some of the prophets have their 
analogies among the clairvoyants of our times. In 
short, should strict investigation show that there is 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 35 

such a thing as clairvoyancy, I, for one, should 
have no objection to the view that God took this 
power of the soul, in many instances, and made use 
of it as a channel for the communication of His will 
to His people. 



y. 



MONITIONS; APPARITIONS OF THE LIVING; 
PROPHETIC VISIONS. 

Having established beyond controversy, as they 
suppose, the fact that some persons have the power, 
under favorable conditions, to read the minds of 
certain others, the members of the British Psychical 
Society have sought to use this truth as an expla- 
nation of various mysteries, and specially of moni- 
tions of danger and death. In the " Memoir of 
Francis Wayland," by his sons, there are the fol- 
lowing anecdotes of his mother : 

" One or two circumstances in the life of Mrs. 
Wayland were sufficiently remarkable to merit re- 
cital. No explanation of them is attempted. At 
the time of their removal to America it was the 



36 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

design of Mr. Wayland and his wife to return in a 
few years, and visit the relatives whom they had 
left behind, specially the mother of Mrs. Wayland. 
This purpose they often spoke of to each other. 
But one morning, after they had been some years 
in this country, she said to him, on waking, ' I do 
not wish to return to England. My mother is 
dead.' No previous intimation of her ill-health had 
been received. He, unknown to her, made a minute 
of the time of her declaration ; and a subsequent 
arrival brought the news of the event, which had 
occurred at about the time at which her mind was 
thus impressed. 

" When her son, the subject of this memoir, was 
expected home from New York, after attending 
medical lectures there during the winter of 1814-'15, 
Mrs. Wayland, who was sitting with her husband, 
suddenly walked the room in great agitation, saying, 
* Pray for my son ; Francis is in danger.' So 
urgent was her request that her husband joined her 
in prayer for his deliverance from peril. At the 
expected time he returned. His mother at once 
asked, ' What has taken place ? ' It appeared that, 
while coming up the North River on a sloop, he 
had fallen overboard, and the sloop had passed over 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 37 

him. He was an athletic swimmer, and readily 
kept himself afloat till he could be rescued. Was it 
the unspeakable power of a mother's love that im- 
parted a vision more than natural V ' — Foot-note, 
Yol. L, p. 20. 

More than a hundred instances similar to this have 
been collected by the society ; they come for the 
most part from persons now living and of the high- 
est character for veracity ; and the witnesses have 
been cross-examined with care. In a majority of 
cases the person who receives the monition is a 
near friend or relative of the one who is in danger 
or death. The explanation favored by the society 
is this. In the most successful experiments in mind- 
reading the experimenter fixes his thought intently 
upon the image to be transferred to the percipient, 
for the result depends not altogether upon the clair- 
voyant powers of the latter, but also in some degree 
upon the force and clearness of thought of the 
former. The person who, like the mother of Way- 
land, receives the monition of danger or death, is a 
mind-reader ; and the person who is in danger or 
death thinks with agony of the endeared one, who 
therefore receives a strong and disturbing impres- 
sion of the event, but knows not whence it comes. 



38 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IK THEIR 

So far as the mind-reading ability of the person re- 
ceiving the monition is concerned, the explanation 
is probably correct ; but I doubt whether persons 
in great danger or at the moment of death usually 
think with special vividness of their relatives and 
friends, since, if the mind is not so far enfeebled 
that it cannot think strongly of any object, it is apt 
to turn to the danger, and to think exclusively of 
that. Is it not possible that affection and much 
friendly intercourse of themselves establish specially 
sympathetic relations between two persons, so that 
one may at times receive some monition of the dan- 
ger of the other, whether that other thinks strongly 
of the person who receives the monition or not ? 

The monition sometimes takes an outward form, 
and presents itself as a vision, perhaps of sleep, 
perhaps of the waking state. Not infrequently the 
endangered or dying person is heard calling, though 
hundreds of miles distant. In the majority of 
these instances the person who appears in the vision, 
or who calls, is found to have died about the time 
of the occurrence, and hence the superstitious sup- 
pose that the spirit of the dead person was permit- 
ted to show itself, or to make itself heard, after its 
departure from the body and before its final depart- 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 39 

lire from the earth. The majority of those who 
report these apparitions and voices are the reverse 
of ghost-seers ; in general each of them lias but one 
solitary instance of the kind to relate, and holds no 
theory in regard to it. The society has attempted 
to work out the hypothesis that the apparition is 
seen or the voice heard just before death, instead of 
just after it, as the ignorant believe. The person 
who has the apparition or hears the voice is a mind- 
reader, and also an endeared friend or relative of 
the dying person, who, finding himself in imminent 
peril and about to die, thinks of the other with such 
unutterable agony and longing as to transfer his 
image, or the sound of his voice, to the mind of the 
other. That the impression takes an external form 
is explained very simply. The nerves of sensation 
may be disturbed and set in action by external ob- 
jects ; but they may also be disturbed and set in 
action by internal forces, by states of the mind. 
For example, the face may be excited at a particular 
point by the sensation of tickling, if touched lightly 
with a straw or a feather ; but one may also create 
in some point of his face the sensation of tickling 
merely by fixing his attention upon it and willing it 
to feel the sensation. So the optic nerve may be 



40 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

excited to action, in which it has the sensation of 
seeing, by external objects ; but it may be excited 
to the same activity, and with the same result, by 
great agitation of the mind. In the latter case it 
will have the sensation of seeing the object thought 
of, and will represent it to the brain as an external 
thing. Thus the accusing thoughts of Macbeth 
stimulate his optic nerves so that they present to 
him the image of a dagger in the air. In short, 
the optic nerve, when stimulated to action, whether 
by objects without, or by some intense agitation of 
the brain with which it is connected, sees, or reports 
that it sees, since vision is its chief function. Let 
us suppose now that the suffering man imprints his 
agony upon the brain of the percipient : then the 
alarm and agitation of the percipient may excite the 
optic nerve and give it the impression of seeing the 
person whose agony has aroused it. Is he sick ? 
Then it may see him in a reclining posture, and 
thin and pallid. Is he drowning ? Then it may 
see him dripping with water. Is he wounded in 
battle ? Then it may see him covered with 
blood. 

The same thing may be said of the other senses, 
as the hearing, the smell, the taste, the touch ; 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 41 

though, as they are less acute, they may be less 
often disturbed by strong mental excitements. 

Such is the theory. It is not free from serious 
difficulties, the chief of which is the admitted fact 
that the apparition is sometimes seen or the voice 
heard after the death of the individual, instead of 
before. To account for this we have the additional 
theory of delayed telepathic communications. 
" There is some reason to think," Mrs. Sidgwick 
writes, " that a telepathic impression may remain 
latent for a time, and force itself into consciousness 
only when quiet, or solitude, or some other con- 
dition favorable to its development, intervenes." 

If the power of reading minds extends thus to 
monitions of danger and death, and to apparitions 
and calls of those who are in great peril or at the 
point of death, it may cast a certain light upon the 
visions and voices of Holy Scripture, which were so 
often the means of divine revelation. According 
to this view, the thoughts suggested by the Holy 
Spirit were imprinted upon the mind of the prophet 
so strongly that they took an external form through 
the agitation of- the nerves of sight or hearing. 
There is a certain gain for the devout Christian in 
this view : the agency of God remains as evident, 



42 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IJST THEIR 

and the meaning of the vision He created remains 
as clear, while some light is cast upon the process 
of His work, and the student of His ways is moved 
to exclaim, with the ecstasy of Kepler : " O God, 
I think Thy thoughts over after Thee !" It is as if 
we could trace His very footsteps as He comes to 
His servants the prophets, and reveals His will 
through them by means of symbolic shadows which 
He gave them to behold and to interpret. 

What I have here said refers strictly to prophetic 
visions, and not at all to those revelations of reali- 
ties which the prophets sometimes received. The 
appearance of Moses and Elijah to Peter, James 
and John at the Transfiguration, and the appear- 
ance of Christ to Saul of Tarsus on the way to 
Damascus, were not visions. 



VI. 

PRAYER. 

The instances of such monitions, apparitions and 
voices as I have mentioned are so numerous, so well 
authenticated, and so uniformly connected with the 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 43 

danger or the death of the person brought before 
the percipient in this manner, that no doubt can re- 
main either of their frequent occurrence or of their 
general character. It follows that when one fixes 
his mind intently upon another, and specially when 
he is moved to do this by strong agony, he may 
create in the mind of the other a vivid thought or 
perhaps image of himself, attended by a tempest of 
emotion. It is probable that we may go further, 
and say that his mental state may be reflected in 
some soul of which he is not thinking at the time, 
but to which he is bound by ties of affection and 
sympathy. Such an effect will not be usual, but it 
will often be produced. 

It has long been said by sceptics that prayer can- 
not accomplish anything, since the infinite God, if 
there be a God, will not change His eternal pur- 
poses in deference to the cries of His finite creat- 
ures ; or, to use the language of another school, since 
the laws of nature are unchangeable. To this objec- 
tion many cogent replies have been made, and among 
them appears the suggestion of Chalmers that prayer 
may itself be a cause in the order of nature capable of 
producing such effects as we desire. This is proved 
by the new psychic studies to be to a certain extent 



44 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

true : intense and agonizing attention fixed upon 
another may disturb that other mightily, may change 
the currents of thought and feeling within him, and 
may suggest our wishes to him. But fervent prayer 
for another is such intense and agonizing attention 
fixed upon the other ; and those anecdotes so often 
heard among Christians, of ardent supplications for 
an absent person being followed immediately by 
strange and solemn impressions seizing upon his 
soul, may have in part a natural explanation. We 
would not be justified in placing prayer among the 
stronger physical causes ; but it may well be placed 
in the category of the strongest psychical causes. 
Regeneration, the radical change of the nature, is 
the work of God alone, in answer to the prayer of 
the Church and of the penitent sinner ; but, while 
prayer cannot of itself do anything to effect this 
great revolution, it may, in a natural manner, im- 
plant in the impenitent soul a new thought of God, 
of duty, of heaven, of hell, or of a pious mother ; 
it may lead him to pause and consider ; it may even 
kindle within him a temporary longing for better 
things. It may thus induce him to open the door 
of his heart, when the Holy Spirit will enter in and 
accomplish His saving work. Christians should be 



RELATION" TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 45 

encouraged by this discovery to pray for their fel- 
low-men, to pray always, and to pray with fervor. 

It seems to be assumed by the experimenters of 
the British Psychic Society that a percipient will 
be more apt to succeed in guessing an object or a 
geometrical figure when a number of persons fix 
their minds on it than when but one does so. At 
least, it is very common for a company of them to 
unite in the experiment with the percipient. I do 
not know that there is any positive proof of the 
theory, but it is a natural inference from known 
facts. If one mind, by fastening its attention upon 
an object, can set in motion mystic forces capable 
of affecting another mind, two persons uniting in 
the effort ought to produce a greater effect, since 
they constitute a greater cause. The forces, what- 
ever they may be, ought to prove strong in propor- 
tion to the number of persons laboring to set them 
in operation for a given purpose, as the current of 
electricity is strong in proportion to the number of 
batteries used to produce it. 

Our Lord has made special promises to those who 
unite in prayer, and the history of the world is full 
of testimony that He is faithful to these gracious 
engagements. It is a rule to which there are but 



46 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

few exceptions that, wheii a considerable part of any 
church is aroused to united and importunate prayer 
for the ungodly, a revival follows. Perhaps the 
promises and their fulfilment have a basis in the 
nature of things, since the union of souls in earnest 
petitions for the lost may set in action forces which 
disturb the lost and transfer to them something of 
the anxiety which is felt on their behalf by their 
Christian friends. Perhaps they are often induced 
thus to open their hearts to the Holy Spirit, who, 
finding them willing, enters in and accomplishes 
His mighty work of regeneration. We have thus a 
double encouragement to unite in prayer : first, the 
promises of God, and second, the nature of things 
as He has created them to fulfil His purposes of love 
and mercy. 

It will be objected that prayer is reduced thus to 
a mere natural agency. Not so. It is found to 
be a natural agency, but not a mere natural agency. 
The moral and spiritual character of the mind- 
reader is not essentially changed by those who 
move him temporarily with their thoughts ; he re- 
mains the same that he was before. Hence the 
radical revolution that we know as regeneration 
cannot be produced by the wishes of Christians, 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 47 

however earnest they may be. Their thoughts and 
emotions may be expressed by outward signs, as 
words, gestures and tears, in which case, though 
they cannot regenerate the soul of the ungodly, 
they may move it, and dispose it to seek regener- 
ation. Or again, their thoughts and emotions may 
be of use in setting in operation mystic forces that 
shall arrest the ungodly and arouse him to feeling, 
and so dispose him to seek regeneration. But this 
is all which man can do by any means at his dis- 
posal : God accomplishes the rest. We do not 
doubt that our agony for impenitent souls is a real 
means of their saltation when it is expressed in 
ordinary ways, by words, and gestures, and tears. 
So, also, we may hold that our agony for souls is a 
real means of their salvation when it moves them 
by telepathic processes, without prejudice to the 
doctrine of the Holy Spirit. We do not doubt that 
God often uses natural agencies in answering prayer, 
such, for example, as our own zeal and benevolence 
awakened by our own prayers : why, therefore, 
should we hesitate to recognize as a means by which 
prayer is answered one more natural agency than 
we have before thought of ? Thus, while no theo- 
retical difficulty is created by the suggestion that 



48 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

prayer, and specially united prayer, may be in itself 
a real cause adequate to produce important effects 
upon the minds of men, great encouragement may 
be found in it. 



VII. 

THE ATMOSPHERE OF ASSEMBLIES. 

The minister accustomed to revivals will remem- 
ber that he has sometimes found an assembly, when 
he has entered it, pervaded by what has seemed to 
him a spiritual atmosphere, that he has then felt 
assured of a favorable issue of the meeting, and 
that his confidence has almost always been justified 
by the result. He will remember the opposite ex- 
perience of a chilling atmosphere and a spiritless 
service in which little apparent advance was made. 
He perceives these different conditions by an im- 
mediate intuition, before anything is said to reveal 
them. Moreover, the spiritual atmosphere of an 
assembly is often changed by the coming in of new 
elements : an assembly in the beginning warm and 
enthusiastic may be chilled by the entrance of a 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 49 

large number of the indifferent or the hostile, 
though they conduct themselves with entire pro- 
priety ; as an assembly in the beginning cold and 
dreary may be rilled with sweet, constraining power 
by the entrance of a large number of devout and 
prayerful persons. Sometimes the entrance of one 
person of either class, if he be of a large and com- 
manding nature, may effect a great change in the 
atmosphere of the place. The leader of a meeting 
which seems chilly and constrained may bring into 
it a spring-tide of melting influences by his own im- 
portunate prayers lifted to heaven in silence, and 
also by exhorting the Christians present to engage 
in special prayers for the presence of the Holy 
Spirit. In such assemblies, where sharp and earnest 
appeals are made to the impenitent, it is as if there 
were a warfare of souls beneath the surface, the 
saints contending in silence with the impenitent sin- 
ners. Perhaps these things may be explained in 
part by telepathy. Here we see how important it 
is that Christians should unite in attending the ser- 
vices of the Church, and in prayer for the preacher 
and for those to whom he brings his holy message. 



50 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

VIII. 

PHYSICAL MANIFESTATIONS IN REVIVALS. 

The majority of our modern revivals are as quiet 
and orderly as the usual Sabbath service. But in 
former days revivals were often attended with vio- 
lent physical manifestations. Under Wesley faint- 
ings, fallings and convulsions were common. The 
early Methodist camp-meetings were wild scenes. 
In our Western States an affection commonly 
called " the jerks" attended them, and in clearing 
the space in the woods to be occupied by the peo- 
ple, the stumps of the smaller trees were left high, so 
that any one seized with this singular malady might 
hold on to them, and thus to a certain extent miti- 
gate the severity of his convulsions. The great 
revival in Ireland, which occurred within our own 
memory, was attended with many such physical 
effects. At the first thought we are disposed to 
say that these disturbances were produced by the 
high religious enthusiasm of those who exhibited 
them ; but it is easy to show the contrary, for the 
religious enthusiast was usually exempt, while those 
who came to gaze in curiosity or to mock in enmity 



RELATION" TO CHRISTIAN" THOUGHT. 51 

were the most frequent victims. It is no longer 
difficult to find a plausible explanation of these 
things : vast numbers of Christians came together, 
and their thoughts and prayers concerned the in- 
different and the hostile almost wholly. If the 
drowning man, by the intense agony with which he 
thinks of his distant wife, can sometimes communi- 
cate to her his own feeling of alarm, cause her to 
suppose that she hears his voice, or present to her a 
vision of his person in dripping garments, it should 
not seem incredible that the overwhelming emotions 
once indulged by Christians in seasons of special 
religious interest should have produced some start- 
ling physical effect through those for whom they 
labored and prayed. E"o doubt these physical dis- 
turbances were often mistaken for the special work 
of the Holy Spirit, and for regeneration, and were 
thus the means of bringing into the churches some 
unconverted persons ; but possibly we have gone 
to the opposite extreme, and by our endeavors to 
extrude all deep emotions from our modern revi- 
vals have sacrificed a valuable element of genuine 
religions power. 

The strange and infective influence of the con- 
vulsionaries of the Middle Ages, so like the physi- 



52 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN" THEIR 

cal influence which once attended revivals, is to be 
explained in the same manner. 



IX. 

MIND-CURE; PRAYER- CURE ; FAITH-CURE. 

Our discussion shows us that there maybe a basis 
in nature for the so-called mind-cure, prayer-cure 
and faith-cure, all of which have large features in 
common. If I lix my mind earnestly upon a per- 
son, I may succeed in disturbing his mind by the 
mere exercise of my own ; I may move his brain ; 
I may affect his nervous system ; and hence, by 
directing my attention to some particular part of 
his body which is diseased, I may possibly excite 
it to healthy action or may turn to it currents of 
vital and healing force. Thus much is possible. 
But this method of cure, if successful at all, since 
its operation is directly upon the brain and nerves, 
would achieve its chief triumphs in nervous diseases, 
as, in fact, it seems to do. Moreover, as the proc- 
esses of telepathy, and the monitions of the endan- 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 53 

gered and the dying, are fitful and uncertain, de- 
pending upon many obscure conditions, so we might 
expect to find this process of healing, as in fact we 
do. Hence those who would make it a substitute for 
the ordinary care of the physician commit a crime 
against human life. But it may prove a valuable 
addition to the science of healing, and the physician 
should not despise it as unworthy of his attention. 
The friends of the sick should be encouraged to pray 
fervently for them, knowing that God will be 
moved by their wishes, and will so order His prov- 
idences as to fulfil their petitions, if this is best, 
and also that they themselves, by the very earnest- 
ness and determination of their souls, may contrib- 
ute to the cure. 

Still further. When God determines to heal the 
sick by a direct interference for their benefit, it 
may be that He operates through the same law that 
the mind-curer uses. If so, He employs natural 
law in effecting the recovery, instead of violating 
it ; and thus we remove the common objection of 
the sceptic to the doctrine that He raises up the sick 
in answer to our prayers. We are brought thus to 
the exhilarating conception that in praying for the 
sick we are working " together with God," and in 



54 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

the exact manner in which He works ; and also 
that He, in answering our petitions, honors us by 
associating us with Him in the very process of ac- 
complishing the gracious deed. 



REVELATION AND INSPIRATION. 

It is often asked how God could reveal Himself 
immediately to the souls of holy men, and how He 
could inspire them with His thoughts, unless by 
such a violation of natural law as would amount to 
their recreation, their transformation into unhuman 
or superhuman beings. For is not each soul en- 
closed within walls which can be entered only 
through the gates of the five senses ? Is it possible 
for God, unless He change its nature, to reach it in 
any other way than the ordinary avenues of ap- 
proach open to all comers ? Must not He draw near 
it, if at all, by means of external nature, which 
shows His power, His wisdom, and to a certain ex- 
tent His kindness ? Is not the doctrine of the di- 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 55 

rect inbreathing of His thought disproved, since 
man has no capacity to receive thought in this man- 
ner ? The new psychic studies tend to remove the 
difficulty, by showing that there are persons capable 
by nature of receiving thought in this very way. 
The majority of men have little of such capacity ; 
and we may see in this fact a reason why God does 
not communicate His truth immediately to all who 
seek it in sincerity ; the mass of them are not fitted 
by the nature with which He has endowed them to 
receive His thoughts by direct impression, and 
therefore He will proceed upon a different plan, un- 
less He determine to alter their nature by a creative 
act. A few men out of the whole race have the ca- 
pacity to receive His thought by direct impression, 
and He will select from these such as are most per- 
fectly fitted for the purpose, and will inspire them 
and commission them to make known His truth to 
the world. Thus one great objection to the doctrine 
of inspiration is removed, and the limitation of in- 
spiration to a few is explained, while also a flood of 
light is cast on the process of inspiration. Further- 
more, as there are persons who can take into their 
minds a specially clear and accurate transcript of 
the thoughts of others, it is no longer difficult to 



56 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN" THEIR 

see how men were made capable of infallible inspi- 
ration, through whose agency we possess the very 
truth, with no admixture of error. The .illustra- 
tion becomes yet more valuable when we consider 
that in telepathy of all degrees of clearness and ac- 
curacy, even the highest, the percipient is in the 
full possession of his consciousness, exercises his 
will freely, and is in an active rather than a passive 
state. 



XL 

MESMERISM; DEMONIAC POSSESSION. 

The researches of the British society emphasize 
in the strongest manner the reality of mesmerism. 
Before the formation of the society mesmerism 
had already been lifted to a respectable position 
among men of science by the experiments of Braid 
and Carpenter ; but the society has made it a sub- 
ject of interest to the whole world, and has cleared 
away some of the errors into which Braid and Car- 
penter fell in their discussion of it. Carpenter re- 
duced mesmerism to the mere expectant attention 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 57 

of the subject, and denied that the silent will of the 
operator fixed upon the subject had any influence 
upon the result. Ten men are told to look stead- 
fastly at a coin, or at the metallic ferule of a walk- 
ing-stick, and are made to believe that in a few 
minutes they will sink to sleep. The object at 
which they gaze is sufficiently bright to aid them in 
fastening their vision upon it, and their minds are 
thus withdrawn from surrounding objects and re- 
leased from ordinary distractions. At the same 
time, they fully expect to slumber. The result is 
that the more yielding and facile among them are 
soon found to be in a strange sleep, as they had 
anticipated. Were there no operator, and did the 
ten men agree among themselves to go through the 
process, and did they expect to fall asleep as the 
result of it, the same persons would actually fall 
asleep. There is no special unexplained influence 
of one mind upon another, but only the influence 
of the mind upon itself : the slumber is produced 
solely by monotonous attention to one object, with 
the expectancy of slumber. Such in substance is 
the teaching of Carpenter, upon which he insists in 
the strongest manner. But the researches of the 
British Psychical Society decidedly discredit it, and 



58 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

show beyond a doubt that, while some may be able 
to throw themselves into the mesmeric state by 
their own will, or by their expectant attention, the 
majority of subjects must be assisted to enter it by 
the will of another, to which they yield themselves. 
When the subject is once thoroughly immersed in 
the mesmeric sleep, can the operator control him 
by a thought, a silent determination that he must 
act in particular ways, or must the operator resort 
to external indications of his will, as words, or sig- 
nificant gestures, or touches of the phrenological 
bumps which are supposed by the subject to be 
connected with various traits of character and to 
dictate certain kinds of words and deeds ? I am 
told that the member of the American society who 
has studied mesmerism most carefully has achieved 
no success in his efforts to control his subjects by 
the unexpressed fiat of his will, but is obliged to 
give them some indication of his wishes through the 
ordinary channels of communication between men. 
Braid and Carpenter maintain that this is always 
necessary. But the committee of the British so- 
ciety to which this branch of study was assigned re- 
port that they get the clearest evidence in certain 
cases of the power of the operator to control his 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 59 

subjects without the use of signs. They refer to 
instances of the closest mental connection between 
the subject and the operator, in which the subject 
feels the mental states of the operator as if they 
were his own, and obeys the will of the operator as 
if it were his own. If the operator is pinched in 
the arm, or the leg, or the hand, the subject com- 
plains of pain in his arm, or leg, or hand, and at 
length grows angry. By a silent determination of 
the operator the tongue of the subject is paralyzed, 
so that he cannot speak, or is loosed and set in 
motion. Not all subjects enter into this state of 
absolute possession by the operator ; perhaps few 
do so ; but there seems to be no doubt that some 
are found so susceptible to the mesmeric influence, 
whatever this may be, that they may be led to such 
a temporary surrender of their own powers to an- 
other as renders them obedient to the slightest be- 
hest of the mind to which they have submitted 
themselves, even when no external sign conveys it 
to them. The negative results of some experiments 
cannot in the least invalidate the positive results of 
others : the failure of Kane to find any traces of 
Sir John Franklin does not discredit the success of 
M-Clintock. 



60 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

We do not know as yet just what physiological 
processes mesmerism involves. The British society 
is inclined to regard telepathy and mesmerism as 
essentially the same, to see in telepathy the incipi- 
ent form of mesmerism, and in mesmerism the ex- 
treme form of telepathy, The view will probably 
not prevail, for it is encumbered with formidable 
difficulties, the chief of which is the fact that the 
telepathic percipient is in no sense under the con- 
trol of the operator, preserves his full self-con- 
sciousness, is in an active state of mind, and is as 
free from all symptoms of mesmeric slumber as is 
the operator himself. 

But be this as it may, every thoughtful Christian 
must be struck with the analogies between mesmer- 
ism and the demoniac possessions of the New Tes- 
tament. If spirits in the flesh can gain almost com- 
plete possession of others, why may not spirits out 
of the flesh ? Henceforth the anecdotes of demoniac 
possession found in the Holy Scriptures must not 
be denied on the ground that such possession is im- 
possible ; for it is found to be quite in accordance 
with the processes of nature which may be observed 
at any time, if a little care be taken. 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 61 

XII. 

MODERN DEMONS. 

The subject of spiritualism has not yet been fully 
investigated by either the British or the American 
society, and some years must probably pass before 
any definite conclusion with reference to it can be 
reached. Many of its marvels are now known to 
be mere tricks of persons interested in making 
money. It is generally admitted, however, that 
there are others which cannot be explained in this 
convenient way ; and it must remain for the pres- 
ent an open question whether spiritualism does not 
present to us on a broad scale a revival of demonism. 
That many of its spirits, whether they are in the 
flesh or without, are "unclean spirits" is abun- 
dantly proved by the antipathy manifested in its 
" messages" to our holy religion, and by the disas- 
trous moral results to which it leads many of its 
devotees. 

While spiritualism, as a whole, has not been 
studied exhaustively by either of the societies, that 
part of it which is known by the name of " plan- 
chette" has received much attention, and has been 



62 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

made the subject of two elaborate papers by Mr. 
F. W. H. Myers, entitled " Automatic Writing," 
and published in the proceedings of the British 
society. The title indicates the opinion of the 
author ; he holds that there is nothing more in the 
writing of planchette than, first, the unconscious 
action of the mind of the person whose hand is in 
contact with the table, and, second, the unconscious 
action of the minds of the spectators upon the mind 
of the writer, affecting it by the telepathic process. 
The explanation which he attempts is cumbrous 
and labored to the last degree, and will hardly 
satisfy the unprejudiced reader. Nor does it satisfy 
its author, who near the close of his work makes 
room for the spiritualistic hypothesis of the inter- 
vention of the dead in the writing of planchette. I 
wish to point out the evidence of demoniac agency, 
which it seems to me he has furnished unwittingly. 
One of the principal experimenters with planchette, 
whose testimony Mr. Myers cites at length, is the 
Rev. P. H. Newnham, A 7 icar of Maker, Daven- 
port, England. Near the end of the report which 
this gentleman makes of the experiments with 
planchette conducted by his wife and himself, he 
says : "It is impossible for me to close this paper 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 63 

without again very urgently calling attention to 
what I have termed the low ' moral ' character of 
the reacting intelligence. We are all familiar with, 
this phenomenon in the average experience of so- 
called ' spiritual controls, ' but in these cases the 
' controlled ' medium is more or less hypnotic and 
unconscious. And I think that the recurrence of 
the same phenomenon in the case of a person in 
perfect health, and in the enjoyment of perfect 
consciousness, is worthy of very serious considera- 
tion." The person referred to is his wife, who was 
the operator of the planchette-table. Going back 
to the body of his report, we find instances of this 
low moral tone, on one of which he comments as 
follows : " In these last answers we see a new moral 
element introduced. There is evasion or subter- 
fuge, of a more or less ingenious kind, and totally 
foreign to the whole character and natural disposi- 
tion of the operator. ' ' Again he points out ' ' a 
similar attempt at deliberate invention, rather than 
plead guilty to total ignorance." In yet another 
place he speaks of " a total indifference to truth for 
its own sake, coupled with what looks like a morbid 
dread of seeming to be ignorant of the reply to the 
question." Mr. Myers himself says : " There is 



(34 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

another peculiarity of the early stages of automatic 
writing which it has somewhat embarrassed spirit- 
ualists to explain. ' Planchette,' automatists often 
testify, l is sadly given to swear.' Especially when 
the hand is exhausted by a long and somewhat bar- 
ren effort, the word ' devil ' will sometimes be writ- 
ten over and over again, with an energy which 
shocks the unsuspecting writer." The low moral 
tone of the intelligence which governs planchette is 
proved first by a childish vanity which cannot bear 
to admit that it is ignorant of anything, and which 
reminds us of the " pride" supposed by many in- 
terpreters of the Scriptures to have been "the 
snare of the devil," which led to his fall ; secondly, 
by foolish and conscienceless falsehood, proceeding 
from spirits who have studied diligently in the 
school of " the father of lies," whether they are in 
the flesh or not ; and, thirdly, by profane language. 
Where the operator and the spectators are persons 
of ordinary decency and truthfulness, the effort to 
trace such utterances to them seems to me neces- 
sarily futile. The supposition of demoniac agency 
is the most natural that we can entertain. If the 
intelligence appears to be weak and foolish as it is 
wicked, this is but another respect in which it re- 



RELATION" TO CHRISTIAN THOCJGHT. 65 

sembles the demons of the New Testament, whose 
mental power is always of a very low kind. 



XIII. 

HAUNTED HOUSES; DEMONS. 

In the beginning of its labors the British Society 
for Psychical Research manifested a tendency to 
explain everything which it investigated as a case 
of mind-reading. This is seen in its treatment of 
apparitions ; its theory in the beginning was that 
they proceed uniformly from the living. Its in- 
vestigations of haunted houses, however, brought 
before it a mass of facts which could not be 
accounted for in this manner. The society has 
collected an immense number of narratives of 
events which believers in ghosts " would be 
apt to refer to the agency of deceased human 
beings." Of these, there are three hundred and 
seventy which seem to deserve special consider- 
ation. The great majority of this group may be 
passed by as not absolutely convincing. But Mrs. 



66 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIE 

Sidgwick, the wife of the late President of the 
society, who writes the very able review of the 
evidence, and may be supposed to represent the 
opinions of her husband, considers eighteen of these 
narratives as sufficient to prove the existence of 
haunted houses. After stating and discussing them 
at length, she expresses her conclusion as follows : 
" I can only say that, having made every effort, as 
my paper will, I hope, have shown, to exercise a 
reasonable scepticism, I yet do not feel equal to 
the degree of unbelief in human testimony neces- 
sary to avoid accepting, at least provisionally, the 
conclusion that there are, in a certain sense, haunted 
houses ; that is, that there are houses in which sim- 
ilar quasi-human apparitions have occurred at differ- 
ent times to different inhabitants, under circum- 
stances which exclude the hypothesis of suggestion 
or expectation." 

The following extract from the. report of the 
committee on haunted houses will be sufficient to 
illustrate the great care with which the enquiry is 
conducted : 

" It seems desirable that we should explain 
clearly the standard that we adopt in estimating the 
claims of any narrative to be included in our list. 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 67 

In the first place, we of course begin by tracing 
every story to its fountain-head. But we do not 
consider that every first-hand narration of the ap- 
pearance of a ghost, even from a thoroughly trust- 
worthy narrator, gives us adequate reason for at- 
tempting further investigation. On the contrary, 
our general principle is that the unsupported evi- 
dence of a single witness does not constitute sufii- 
cient ground for accepting an apparition as having 
a prima facie claim to objective reality. To dis- 
tinguish any apparition from an ordinary hallucina- 
tion, such as those recorded by Abercrombie, Brew- 
ster, Carpenter, and others, it must receive some 
independent evidence to corroborate it. And this 
corroboration may be of two kinds : we may have 
the consentient testimony of several witnesses ; or 
there may be some point of external agreement and 
coincidence, unknown, as such, to the seer at the 
time, as, for example, the periodic appearance on a 
particular anniversary, or the recognition of a 
peculiar dress, to give to the vision an objective 
foundation. As regards the first of these two cases, 
there is a distinction to be drawn which is of the 
greatest importance, though commonly neglected. 
It may often happen that several persons misinter- 



C8 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

pret the same phenomenon in the same manner, ex- 
emplifying what is called ' collective delusion.' 
But neither science nor the common experience 
of life has produced, any undoubted cases anal- 
ogous to what, in this department, has been 
designated ' collective hallucination,' that is, the 
observation and identical description by several 
persons of an appearance having no basis in real- 
ity." 

Did my space permit, I should introduce here 
the narratives on which Mrs. Sidgwick bases her 
conviction that there are haunted houses. Instead 
of these, I shall cite an instance of the same kind 
from the writings of Rev. John Wesley, the founder 
of the Methodist societies. His statement, which 
I reproduce in full from the u Memoirs of the 
Wesley Family," by Dr. Adam Clarke, the com- 
mentator, has become a classic in the discussion of 
the subject, and is referred to by all his biographers 
of any note as of the highest importance. In the 
volume from which I quote it, as also in Southey's 
''Life of Wesley," it is accompanied by the 
corroborative statements of numerous other wit- 
nesses, chiefly the members of his father's house- 
hold. 



RELATION - TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 69 

Narrative drawn up by Mr. John Wesley, and pub- 
lished by him in the Arminian Magazine. 

" When I was very young I heard several letters 
read, wrote to my elder brother by my father, giv- 
ing an account of strange disturbances which were 
in his house at Epworth, in Lincolnshire. 

" When I went down thither, in the year 1720, 
1 carefully inquired into the particulars. I spoke 
to each of the persons who were then in the house, 
and took down what each could testify of his or 
her own knowledge, the sum of which was this : 

" On December 2d, 1716, while Robert Brown, 
my father's servant, was sitting with one of the 
maids, a little before ten at night, in the dining- 
room which opened into the garden, they both heard 
one knocking at the door. Robert rose and opened 
it, but could see nobody. Quickly it knocked 
again, and groaned. 'It is Mr. Turpine,' said 
Robert ; ' he has the stone, and uses to groan so.' 
He opened the door again twice or thrice, the knock- 
ing being twice or thrice repeated ; but still seeing 
nothing, and being a little startled, they rose and 
went up to bed. When Robert came to the top of 
the garret stairs he saw a hand-mill, which was at 



70 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

a little distance, whirled about very swiftly. "When 
lie related this, he said, ' Nought vexed me but 
that it was empty. I thought, if it had but been 
full of malt, he might have ground his heart out 
for me. ' When he was in bed he heard as it were 
the gobbling of a turkey-cock close to the bedside, 
and soon after the sound as of one stumbling over 
his shoes and boots, but there were none there ; he 
had left them below. The next day he and the 
maid related these things to the other maid, who 
laughed heartily, and said, ' What a couple of fools 
are you ! I defy anything to fright me.' After 
churning in the evening she put the butter in the 
tray, and had no sooner carried it into the dairy 
than she heard a knocking on the shelf where sev- 
eral puncheons of milk stood, first above the shelf, 
then below. She took the candle, and searched 
both above and below ; but, being able to find noth- 
ing, threw down butter, tray, and all, and ran away 
for her life. The next evening, between five and 
six o'clock, my sister Molly, then about twenty 
years of age, sitting in the dining-room reading, 
heard as if it were the door that led into the hall 
open, and a person walking in, that seemed to have 
on a silk night-gown, rustling and trailing. It 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 71 

seemed to walk round her, then to the door, then 
round again ; but she could see nothing. She 
thought, ' It signifies nothing to run away ; for, 
whatever it is, it can run faster than me.' So she 
rose, put her book under her arm, and walked 
slowly away. After supper she was sitting with her 
sister Sukey (about a year older than her) in one of 
the chambers, and telling her what had happened ; 
she made quite light of it, telling her, ' I wonder 
you are so easily frightened ; I would fain see what 
would fright me.' Presently a knocking began 
under the table. She took the candle and looked, 
but could find nothing. Then the iron casement 
began to clatter, and the lid of a warming-pan. 
Next the latch of the door moved up and down 
without ceasing. She started up, leaped into the 
bed without undressing, pulled the bedclothes 
over her head, and never ventured to look up till 
next morning. A night or two after my sister 
Hetty, a year younger than my sister Molly, was 
waiting, as usual, between nine and ten, to take 
away my father's candle, when she heard one com- 
ing down the garret stairs, walking slowly by her, 
then going down the best stairs, then up the back 
stairs, and up the garret stairs ; and at every step 



72 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

it seemed the house shook from top to bottom. 
Just then my father knocked. She went in, took 
his candle, and got to bed as fast as possible. In 
the morning she told this to my eldest sister, who 
told her, l You know I believe none of these things ; 
pray let me take away the candle to-night, and I 
will find out the trick.' She accordingly took my 
sister Hetty's place, and had no sooner taken away 
the candle than she heard a noise below. She 
hastened down-stairs to the hall, where the noise 
was, but it was then in the kitchen. She ran into 
the kitchen, where it was drumming on the inside 
of the screen. When she went round it was drum- 
ming on the outside, and so always on the side op- 
posite to her. Then she heard a knocking at the 
back kitchen door. She ran to it, unlocked it 
softly, and when the knocking was repeated sud- 
denly opened it, but nothing was to be seen. As 
soon as she had shut it the knocking began again. 
She opened it again, but could see nothing. When 
she went to shut the door, it was violently thrust 
against her ; she let it fly open, bat nothing ap- 
peared. She went again to shut it, and it was 
again thrust against her ; but she put her knee and 
her shoulder to the door, forced it to, and turned 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 73 

the key. Then the knocking began again ; but she 
let it go on, and went up to bed. However, from 
that time she was thoroughly convinced that there 
was no imposture in the affair. 

" The next morning my sister, telling my mother 
what had happened, she said, ' If I hear anything 
myself, I shall know how to judge. ' Soon after 
she begged her to come into the nursery. She did, 
and heard in the corner of the room as it were the 
violent rocking of a cradle, but no cradle had been 
there for some years. She was convinced it was 
preternatural, and earnestly prayed it might not 
disturb her in her own chamber at the hours of re- 
tirement, and it never did. She now thought it 
was proper to tell my father. But he was ex- 
tremely angry, and said, ' Sukey, I am ashamed of 
yon. These boys and girls frighten one another, 
but you are a woman of sense, and should know 
better. Let me hear of it no more.' 

" At six in the evening he had family prayers, 
as usual. When he began the prayer for the king 
a knocking began all round the room, and a thun- 
dering knock attended the Amen. The same was 
heard from this time every morning and evening 
while the prayer for the king was repeated. As 



74 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

both my father and mother are now at rest, and 
incapable of being pained thereby, I think it my 
duty to furnish the serious reader with a key to this 
circumstance. 

" The year before King William died my father 
observed my mother did not say Amen to the 
prayer for the king. She said she could not, for 
she did not believe the Prince of Orange was king. 
He vowed he never would cohabit with her till she 
did. He then took his horse and rode away ; nor 
did she hear anything of him for a twelvemonth. 
He then came back, and lived with her as before. 
But I fear his vow was not forgotten before God. 

" Being informed that Mr. Hoole, the Vicar of 
Haxey (an eminently pious and sensible man), 
could give me some further information, I walked 
over to him. He said, ' Robert Brown came over 
to me, and told me your father desired my com- 
pany. When I came he gave an account of all 
that had happened, particularly the knocking dur- 
ing family prayer. But that evening, to my great 
satisfaction, we had no knocking at all. But be- 
tween nine and ten a servant came in, and said, 
" Old Jeffrey is coming (that was the name of one 
that died in the house), for I hear the signal." 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOCGHT. 75 

This, they informed me, was heard every night 
about a quarter before ten. It was toward the top 
of the house on the outside, at the north-east cor- 
ner, resembling the loud creaking of a saw, or 
rather that of a windmill when the body of it is 
turned about in order to shift the sails to the wind. 
We then heard a knocking over our heads ; and 
Mr. Wesley, catching up a candle, said, " Come, 
sir, now you shall hear for yourself." We went up 
stairs, he with much hope, and I (to say the truth) 
with much fear. When we came into the nursery 
it was knocking in the next room ; when we were 
there it was knocking in the nursery. And there 
it continued to knock, though we came in, particu- 
larly at the head of the bed (which was of wood), 
in which Miss Hetty and two of her younger sisters 
lay. Mr. Wesley, observing that they were much 
affected, though asleep, sweating, and trembling 
exceedingly, was very angry ; and pulling out a 
pistol, was going to fire at the place from which 
the sounds came. But I catched him by the arm, 
and said, " Sir, you are convinced this is something 
preternatural. If so, you cannot hurt it, but you 
give it power to hurt you. " He then went close to 
the place, and said, sternly, " Thou deaf and dumb 



76 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

devil, why dost thou fright these children, that 
cannot answer for themselves ? Come to me in my 
study, that am a man !" Instantly it knocked his 
knock (the particular knock which he always used 
at the gate), as if it would shiver the board in 
pieces, and we heard nothing more that night.' 

"Till this time my father had never heard the 
least disturbances in his study. But the next even- 
ing, as he attempted to go into his study (of which 
none had any key but himself), when he opened 
the door it was thrust back with such violence as 
had like to have thrown him down. However, he 
thrust the door open and went in. Presently there 
was knocking, first on one side, then on the other ; 
and, after a time, in the next room, where my sister 
[Nancy was. He went into that room, and, the 
noise continuing, adjured it to speak ; but in vain- 
He then said, ' These spirits love darkness ; put 
out the candle, and perhaps it will speak.' She 
did so, and he repeated his adjuration ; but still 
there was only knocking, and no articulate sound. 
Upon this he said, ' Xancy, two Christians are an 
overmatch for the devil. Go all of you down- 
stairs ; it may be when I am alone he will have 
courage to speak.' When she was gone a thought 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 77 

came in, and he said, ' If thou art the spirit of my 
son Samuel, pray knock three knocks, and no 
more.' Immediately all was silence, and there 
was no more knocking all that night. I asked my 
sister Nancy, then about fifteen years old, whether 
she was not afraid when my father used that ad- 
juration ? She answered she was sadly afraid it 
would speak when she put out the candle, but she 
was not at all afraid in the daytime, when it walked 
after her as she swept the chambers, and seemed 
to sweep after her ; only she thought it might 
have done it for her, and saved her the trouble. 
By this time all my sisters were so accustomed to 
these noises that they gave them little disturbance. 
A gentle tapping at their bed-head usually began 
between nine and ten at night. Then they com- 
monly said to each other, ' Jeffrey is coming ; it is 
time to go to sleep.' And if they heard a noise in 
the day, and said to my younger sister, ' Hark, 
Kezzy, Jeffrey is knocking above,' she would run 
up-stairs, and pursue it from room to room, saying 
she desired no better diversion. 

" A few nights after, my father and mother were 
just gone to bed, and the candle was not taken 
away, when they heard three blows, and a second, 



78 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN" THEIR 

and a third three, as it were with a large oaken 
staff, struck upon a chest which stood by the bed- 
side. My father immediately arose, put on his 
night-gown, and, hearing great noises below, took 
the candle, and went down ; my mother walked by 
his side. As they went down the broad stairs they 
heard as if a vessel full of silver was poured upon 
my mother's breast, and ran jingling down to her 
feet. Quickly after there was a sound as if a 
large iron ball was thrown among many bottles 
under the stairs, but nothing was hurt. Soon after 
our large mastiff dog came and ran to shelter him- 
self between them. While the disturbances con- 
tinued he used to bark and leap, and snap on one 
side and the other, and that frequently before any 
person in the room heard any noise at all. But 
after two or three days he used to tremble, and 
creep away before the noise began. And by this 
the family knew it was at hand, nor did the ob- 
servation ever fail. A little before my father and 
mother came into the hall it seemed as if a very 
large coal was violently thrown upon the floor, and 
dashed all in pieces, but nothing was seen. My 
father then cried out, ' Sukey, did you not hear ? 
All the pewter is thrown about the kitchen.' But 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 79 

when they looked all the pewter stood in its place. 
There then was a loud knocking at the back door. 
My father opened it, but saw nothing. It was then 
at the foredoor. He opened that, but it was still 
lost labor. After opening first the one, then the 
other, several times, he turned, and went up to 
bed. But the noises were so violent all over the 
house that he could not sleep till four in the morn- 
ing. 

" Several gentlemen and clergymen now ear- 
nestly advised my father to quit the house. But he 
constantly answered, 'No; let the devil flee from 
me ; I will never flee from the devil.' But he 
wrote to my eldest brother at London to come 
down. He was preparing so to do, when another 
letter came, informing him the disturbances were 
over, after they had continued (the latter part of 
the time day and night) from the second of Decem- 
ber to the end of January." 

Still more remarkable were the disturbances 
which occurred in the house of Rev. Eliakim 
Phelps, D.D., at Stratford, Conn. He was the 
father of Eev. Austin Phelps, D.D., for so many 
years the distinguished Professor of Homiletics at 
Andover, Mass., and the author of numerous well- 



80 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

known works of instruction and devotion. The nar- 
rative is too long for use in these pages ; but the 
reader will find it in a volume entitled " Spiritual 
Manifestations," by Rev. Charles Beecher, as well 
as in a variety of other publications dealing with 
the same subject. The events are characterized 
thus by Dr. Austin Phelps in his recent book, " My 
Portfolio," at page 15 : 

" It was after his retirement from public life 
that he became interested in spiritualism. It would 
be more truthful to say that it became interested iu 
him ; for it came upon him without his seeking, 
suddenly invading his household, and making a 
pandemonium of it for seven months, and then de- 
parting as suddenly as it came. The phenomena 
resembled those which for many years afflicted the 
Wesley family, and those which at one time at- 
tended the person of Oberlin. They were an al- 
most literal repetition of some of the records left 
by Cotton Mather. Had my father lived in 1650, 
instead of 1850, he and his family would have lived 
in history with the victims on Tower Hill in Salem. 
That the facts were real, a thousand witnesses testi- 
fied. An eminent judge in the State of New York 
said that he had pronounced sentence of death on 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 81 

many a criminal on a tithe of the evidence which 
supported these facts. That they were inexplicable 
by any known principles of science was equally 
clear to all who saw and heard them who were 
qualified to judge. Experts in science went to 
Stratford in triumphant expectation, and came away 
in dogged silence, convinced of nothing, yet solving 
nothing. If modern science had nothing to show 
more worthy of respect than its solutions of spirit- 
ualism, alchemy would be its equal, and astrology 
infinitely its superior. It will never do to confine 
a delusion so seductive to the ignorant and so wel- 
come to the sceptic to the limbo of ' an if,' and 
leave it there. 

" To my father, the whole thing was a visita- 
tion from God. He bowed to the affliction in sor- 
row and in prayer. Re never gave credence to it 
as a revelation of religious truth for an hour. The 
only point in which it affected his interpretation of 
the Scriptures was that of the biblical demonology. 
"When science failed to give him an explanation 
which deserved respect, he fell back upon the his- 
toric faith of the Christian Church in the personal- 
ity and activity of angels, good and evil. He held 
the scriptural demonology as a tentative explana- 



82 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

tion of spiritualism until science could f urnisli some- 
thing better." 

Let us now return to the work of the British 
society. Mrs. Sidgwick does not regard it as proved 
that the phantasms associated with haunted houses 
proceed from spirits of the dead, or indeed from 
any kind of spirits. She considers it possible that 
one person has an hallucination, in which what he 
supposes to be a ghost appears to him, and that he 
propagates to other minds, by an unconscious tele- 
pathic process, by a sort of mental infection, the 
impression made upon his own ; which would ac- 
count for the fact that the same figure is seen by 
various observers. Or again, she suggests as pos- 
sibly true the theory that there may be some occult 
quality in the house itself which causes those who 
inhabit it to see human forms and hear mysterious 
sounds. It must be confessed that it is not easy to 
accept either of these explanations after reading the 
narratives which Mrs. Sidgwick gives. 

But when we turn to the popular theory that the 
phantasms are the appearances of the dead, we are 
confronted with an enormous difficulty, which Mrs. 
Sidgwick states as follows : " There is a total ab- 
sence of any apparent object or intelligent action on 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 83 

the part of the ghost. If its visits have an object, 
it entirely fails to explain it. It does not commu- 
nicate important facts. It does not point out lost 
wills or hidden treasure. It does not even speak." 
The difficulty is even greater than it is here 
represented to be, for the ghost usually acts in a 
manner indicating insanity or idiocy. In one nar- 
rative it is a tall man dressed in a frock coat, who 
comes into a particular chamber every night and 
stands gazing down upon the occupant of the bed. 
In another narrative it is a tall man with a very 
pale face and dark hair and mustache ; the expres- 
sion of his countenance is sorrowful ; sometimes he 
is seen peeping around the side of an open door- 
way ; sometimes he steals up behind the lady of the 
house, and slaps her familiarly on the back ; and 
sometimes he is heard saying in a tone of deep 
grief, " I can't find it." In another narrative the 
ghost is a woman dressed as a housemaid, who is 
usually seen as she is in the act of turning around 
corners and going to the door when the bell rings, 
and is heard in a particular dressing-room industri- 
ously moving the furniture, though no change is 
effected in the arrangement of the various articles. 
In another narrative, whose scene is India, the 



84 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

ghost is a woman dressed in the costume of the 
natives, haunting the sleeping- rooms on one par- 
ticular side of the house, and always vanishing 
when addressed or pursued. In another narrative 
the ghost is a woman dressed in the garb of a 
widow, and always holding a handkerchief to her 
forehead and weeping, sometimes audibly. In one 
case the ghost spends the night in digging, so that 
the sound of its mattock or its spade is very dis- 
tinct, though the earth is not disturbed ; in another 
it employs itself in making the night hideous with 
the crash of breaking glass or pottery ; in another 
it displays a fondness for heat, standing near the 
fireplace or the stove, but vanishing when ad- 
dressed. In short, not a single ghost of all that are 
brought before us in this collection of narratives 
seems to have any purpose, to act in a rational man- 
ner, to accomplish anything. Put these ghosts to- 
gether in a building ; let them exhibit the human 
form and act as they do in these narratives ; then 
introduce a physician to the company, and ask him 
to give his opinion of it. He will say that he is 
in an asylum for the insane and idiotic, some of 
whom are so violent and uproarious as to make it a 
bedlam. This is one evidence of the truth of the 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 85 

narratives which we ought not to overlook : were 
they the inventions of ingenious men, or were even 
a part of them made for the occasion, they would 
not exhibit such uniform consistency of aimlessness 
and unreason. 

My conclusion is this. If we regard these ap- 
paritions as real beings, we must suppose either that 
insanity and idiocy are carried beyond the grave, 
and are granted the exclusive privilege of remain- 
ing upon the earth and haunting the houses of its 
inhabitants, making it a vast asylum for the disem- 
bodied insane, or else that the phantoms are not of 
the human race. Now, the demons of the New 
Testament never appear in forms other than those 
of the victims whom they possess ; yet they are 
sometimes associated with the insanity of their vic- 
tims, with epilepsy, and with deafness and dumb- 
ness. When driven out of a human victim, whom 
they have rendered insane, they commit an insane 
action in the swine, driving the hapless animals into 
the lake, and impelling them to drown themselves. 
The conduct of the ghosts to which Mrs. Sidgwick 
introduces us resembles that of these demons much 
more than that of ordinary men and women. While 
I express this opinion, I do not wish to be under- 



86 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

stood as supposing that the evidence for it is very 
cogent ; I only wish to say that if obliged to choose 
between the theory that the ghost is a disembodied 
human spirit and the theory that it is a demon, I 
should feel compelled to the latter. The whole sub- 
ject is greatly in need of further investigation. 



XIY. 



HAUNTED HOUSES; THE HISTORY OF 
BALAAM. 

When Balaam started on his mission of evil to 
the land of Moab, the beast on which he rode saw 
the angel of Jehovah thrice before its master be- 
came aware of the celestial spirit. I have been re- 
minded of this several times in reading Mrs. Sidg- 
wick's paper on ghosts. "We have," she says, 
" several accounts of horses being frightened in 
places supposed to be haunted, where their riders 
or drivers see nothing." We must not attach too 
much importance to such statements, for, as she 
adds, " horses are nervous animals, and it is diffi- 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 87 

cult to exhaust the possible causes of their alarm. " 
But there are accounts of a kindred nature touching 
the experiences of human beings, as, for instance, 
the following : " Once Mrs. Townsend was greatly 
startled by a tremendous crash, which Mr. Town- 
send did not hear at all. ' ' Again : ' ' Sometimes 
two or three people heard the noises, or were woke 
up by them. At other times only one person would 
hear them. On one New Year's Eve, when Miss 

T and !N were alone in the house, N 

came up from the kitchen to the dining-room, where 

Miss T was sitting, to see what was the matter. 

He had heard loud noises, as of furniture being 

dragged about in the dining-room. Miss T 

had heard nothing, and the house seemed perfectly 

quiet. On another occasion Miss T heard the 

same noise, as of furniture being moved, etc., in 
the room above hers, which was occupied by her 

brother, Mr. T . She went up to see what was 

the matter, and knocked at his door, but he was 
fast asleep." The query is suggested by such 
statements whether it is one of the distinguishing 
capacities of spirits to reveal themselves to certain 
individuals in a company, while remaining concealed 
from others. There seems to be the best evidence 



88 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

that animals as well as men may become aware of 
these phantasms and noises, and be alarmed by 
them. Take the following as a specimen of it : "I 
was awoke by the dog barking about twelve 
o'clock. The barking stopped, but I heard what 
sounded like steps down-stairs. Yery soon the old 
noises began in our little library : jumping about, 
the window rattling, the whole place shaking, till 
my windows rattled, too. The dog whined inces- 
santly, and the banging and jumping seemed to 
grow more and more boisterous. I got up and made 
some noise with the furniture in my room, lighted 
my candles, and went into the landing to listen if 
there were noises in the other part of the house ; 
but all was perfectly quiet there, though in the lit- 
tle room down-stairs the dog seemed to grow more 
and more distressed, and the noises continued more 
violently than ever. I listened to them till three 
o'clock, and as there seemed no chance of their 
stopping, I left my room and passed the rest of the 
night at Helen's. The dog evidently was still 
afraid of the room when the morning came. I 
called to him to go into it with me, and he crouched 
down with his tail between his legs, and seemed to 
fear entering it." 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOTGHT. 89 

XV. 

RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 

We have now followed the steps of the Society 
for Psychical Research through almost the whole 
field of its investigations ; we have reached the end 
of our journey ; and it may be well to turn hack, 
look over the way we have come, and consider how 
much of it lies on sure and safe ground, and how 
much along the dizzy and perilous verge of conjec- 
ture. 1. We may place mind-reading among the 
assured facts of science, though in its clearer forms 
it is seldom met with. 2. The existence of mes- 
merism cannot be disputed, and henceforth only its 
nature, its limitations, and its practical uses will be 
debated by its students. 3. It must be admitted 
that persons who are in danger or are about to die 
sometimes transmit to their friends and relatives, 
though separated from them by great distances, 
their apparitions and their voices. 

Among the subjects still left in a state of uncer- 
tainty, we may place clairvoyance, in the broader 
sense of the word, and haunted houses. 

The Christian has no reason to regret the work 



90 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 

already done by the Psychical Society, or to fear 
that which is to follow ; on the contrary, he may 
hope to learn much that shall tend to confute infi- 
delity, to break the bonds of superstition, to check 
vice and crime, and to illustrate the teachings of 
his holy religion. The so-called " ghosts," which 
have been the subjects of patient investigation, may 
be but the figments of the imagination ; but if 
they have any substantial existence, they exhibit 
few attributes of humanity except the outward 
form ; and we might admit the truth of all the nar- 
ratives collected by the society without abandoning 
the ordinary view that the realm of the dead is 

" The undiscovered country, from whose bourn 
No traveller returns." 

Much remains to be done in all the departments 
of investigation brought before us in these pages, 
and there are other departments scarcely touched 
as yet, as clairvoyance, spiritualism, and the Bud- 
dhistic occultism. In pursuing his researches in 
these regions, the devout enquirer walks through 
such a murky atmosphere and meets so many dim 
and evil shapes, that he must often recoil from the 
task, as did Dante on his pilgrimage through 
hell : 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN" THOUGHT. 91 

" I felt my hair stand all on end already 
With terror, and stood backwardly intent." 

But as the journey of the poet led him to Paradise, 
so the studies into which the Society for Psychical 
Research would conduct us can issue only in the 
higher regions of truth, of faith, of reverence, and 
of virtue. 



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